The tanned Italian is expected to be offered an extension to his contract and that prospect can only be enhanced if Renault show signs of mounting a genuine challenge to Ferrari's domination when the World Championship begins in Melbourne on March 6.

It is a measure of Briatore's impact on F1 that his departure would be widely lamented. The 54-year-old who swaps celebrity girlfriends the way most teams change drivers offers a regular source of colour supplement material. Eddie Jordan, that Irish version of the irreverent team leader, has sole control of his operation and the game can ill-afford to lose another of its extrovert personalities.

There was a time when the drivers satisfied the public craving for the flamboyant or controversial. These days, corporate claptrap demands politically correct automatons, which is why the recent exploits of Finland's Kimi Raikkonen at a lap-dancing club landed him in trouble with his team, McLaren. Their dogmatic reaction served to encapsulate, in Briatore's mind, much of what is wrong with modern F1.

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"If Raikkonen was my driver and he went to a club for a drink and some fun, I would have no problem with that," said Briatore at Renault's factory in the Cotswolds. "We have to understand that a young driver is not a robot. As long as he is not drinking the night before a race, why not?

"You don't want drivers to be like book-keepers. A driver needs to have a personality. What Raikkonen did is like a breath of fresh air. Maybe he should be given a drink before he speaks to the press in future. You go back to drivers like Nelson Piquet who was a normal guy, to Gerhard Berger, Riccardo Patrese, Nigel Mansell. Now the kids look like they are fabricated. They're all the same. I don't recognise 60 per cent of them out of their overalls. I used to know them all - now I can't even pronounce some of their names!"

Michael Schumacher's comprehensive fifth consecutive Championship success and his seventh in all last season spread despair beyond the portals of Maranello.

"What is important is to get F1 back on to the sports pages," Briatore said. "We hear too much about finance and troubles when the public want a good race. We spend all this money on technology. Is this good for the sport? I don't think so.

"We have big discussions about gearboxes, but I've never seen a gearbox winning a race, only losing. We have 800 to 1,000 people to put two cars on the grid. I believe it is too much. We had better racing 12 years ago for 60 per cent of the budget.

"We have to give customers what they want to see - a good fight between drivers, with the Championship finishing in the last race, or a fight between two drivers in the same team - something that is not allowed at Ferrari."

That not so subtle dig at the champions might also be considered a tad hypocritical, since Briatore effectively created the Monster called Michael. He poached the young German after his debut with Jordan and together they achieved improbable Championship success at Benetton. The team won a constructors' title and Schumacher, with the benefit of outright No 1 status, was world champion in 1994 and 1995.

Briatore accepts the onus is on the rest to beat Ferrari and contends that his 23-year-old Spanish driver, Fernando Alonso, can replicate Schumacher's feat at the team bought out by Renault and officially renamed in 2002.

"Michael arrived at the right time because there was not the strong competition there had been," Briatore said. "There was no Ayrton Senna, and Nigel and Alain Prost had gone when he won his first Championship. That left Damon Hill and Mika Hakkinen, so in a way he was lucky.

"Now, instead of Schumacher, we have Alonso. We have the same philosophy and Alonso can do the same. Spain is now one of the big countries for F1 because of Fernando, like Germany became because of Michael.

"We and other teams must put Michael under more pressure because last season he was like a taxi driver, with one arm out of the window. It was so easy. If you put him under pressure you can be successful, as Hill and Hakkinen were. (Jacques Villeneuve also). We have to do that for the good of the sport and I think it will be better this year."

Briatore, frowned upon as an interloper when he sauntered into the paddock from Benetton's core business in the United States 16 years ago, is now acknowledged as a member of the establishment. So much so that he has been touted as a potential successor to F1's impresario, Bernie Ecclestone.

"I would not be interested in Bernie's job," he maintains. "For me the attraction and the motivation is competing every day, before at Benetton, then with Supertec and now back here with Renault. Last year we were third in the constructors' championship, this year I believe we and McLaren can fight with Ferrari. So sure, I would like to finish the job."

Even Briatore's most vitriolic detractors of the past would have to admit they will miss him when he is gone.